


The Hermit

by Innwich



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Desert, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Planet Tatooine (Star Wars), Pre-Series, Spoilers for season 2 episode 1, Tusken Raiders (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27674509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innwich/pseuds/Innwich
Summary: Din hadn’t spent much time on Tatooine. He had lost his transport and his quarry in the Dune Sea, and he would have lost more if a stranger hadn’t offered to help him for a price.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Boba Fett, Din Djarin/Boba Fett
Comments: 38
Kudos: 225





	1. Chapter 1

_Hermit: From the Greek word erēmitēs, of the desert, dwelling in the desert._

The native didn’t realize that Din had been awake for a full minute now.

Din didn’t move. He was lying on his back. His throat was parched and his mouth tasted like dry rags. The twin suns were unforgiving even through his tinted visor. Sand had gotten under his flight suit. Not much time could’ve passed since the explosion. Parts from his rented swoop bike were still burning in the sand where they had been scattered far across the dunes. Thick black plumes were rising from the piles of twisted metal.

Din couldn’t see much of the native other than the long cycler rifle and gaffi stick that strung low over the back of the native’s dusty brown robes. Din’s durasteel armor would hold up against the stick, but not the rifle. A bullet from a gun like that would penetrate his armor at point blank range, and that was if he weren’t shot in the gaps in his armor. The native was straying close to the charred engine that had powered Din’s rental. Maybe he was planning to trade it to the Jawas that roamed the desert in their crawling fortresses. He stepped over Din’s outstretched arm, kicking up sand which was then blown away by the wind. The wind carried with it the heavy musk of a bantha nearby.

A bantha meant transport. It meant escape from a slow death under the suns. And all that stood between Din and the bantha was its owner.

This was the Dune Sea (the Dead Sea, the Boneyard, the Endless Frontier). People had done worse things in the desert than scaring a native off and stealing his mount. Din had travelled for days if not weeks on his swoop bike. He didn’t know how far he would make it on a bantha with his dwindling supplies, but he could go for broke and make a break for Mos Eisley. A bantha would serve as food and drink if push came to shove. As for the native, the loss of his transport wouldn’t be a death sentence for him like it would be for Din. There were probably tribes in the area that would help one of their own.

With his mind made up, Din now had to find his guns.

His Amban rifle wasn’t anywhere in his limited line of sight. During the ride, it had been strapped under his seat to the side of the swoop bike. It was either burning with the rest of the bike or buried in the sand somewhere. All he had were the disintegration disruptor rounds that he wore on the bandolier slung over his chest plate. His blaster pistol, on the other hand, should still be in his gun holster if it hadn’t been lost in the explosion. He only had to reach for it without alerting the native. 

He felt for the gun holster at his hip. The clasp keeping the holster closed was still secured. He flicked it open and closed his hand around the comfortable weight of his blaster.

His relief didn’t last long. Suddenly he was staring up the barrel of a cycler rifle. The gun was jammed right in his face, against the reinforced glass of his visor, which was the weakest spot on his beskar helmet. Din hadn’t known a cycler rifle this intimately before. He had made it a habit to stay out of the firing range of these guns.

“You’re awake.”

The familiar language took Din aback. “You speak Basic.”

“Among other languages,” the man said. Despite his clothing, he didn’t wear the distinctive face coverings of the natives. He was bald and his brown face was marred by extensive scarring. His eyebrows were gone; his brow ridge was covered in discolored scar tissues. He kicked the blaster out of Din’s hand, sending it skittering far away. “Stay still if you want to keep your head. I’m not done looking through the wreckage yet. And I’ll be taking that.”

As soon as the man made a grab for Din’s bandolier, Din activated the flamethrower mounted on his vambrace and blasted fire at the man’s head.

The man backed away. Din got onto his feet, feeling for his blaster in the sand. But his flamethrower didn’t bring him respite for long. The man brought his gaffi stick down hard on Din’s vambrace, knocking Din’s arm sideways. Din didn’t feel the blow, but his flamethrower died. It wouldn’t fire no matter how hard he squeezed the trigger. The man had taken advantage of the lull to rip the disruptor rounds off of Din’s bandolier.

Din pulled out the vibroblade strapped to his thigh. He sliced upwards at the man’s torso. Instead of dodging Din’s swing, the man caught his forearm, and, to Din’s shock, pried open the flamethrower fuel latch in his vambrace and yanked out his vial of pressurized fuel. Before Din could react, the man planted his boot on Din’s chestplate and kicked him away. Din stumbled back, barely keeping his balance. His vibroblade was still bloodless and vibrating shrilly in his grip.

Din flung his vibroblade at the man.

The man’s reflex was lightning fast. The man was already moving out of the trajectory path of the vibroblade. The vibroblade shrieked through the air before it buried itself to the hilt in the sand.

“You need to improve your form.” The man trained his cycler rifle on Din again. Din put his hands up at the silent threat. The man continued, “But it’ll take more than a Mandalorian guild hunter to kill me.”

Din felt his ears grow hot under his helmet. Maybe it was the straight face with which the man had delivered his criticism. Din’s targets usually just taunted him in delight when they managed to turn the tables on him. Something in those words made Din feel like he was a kid again, being berated by his mentors in the Fighting Corps for being too slow, too quiet, too soft. They had had a point, of course. Without them, he would have lost his Way. These days, he was more than good enough for the company that he kept. Mercs had fought to recruit him into their crews and quarries scurried away from the sight of him. Greef Karga had complained about Din having tunnel vision, about how he could be wearing fathier blinders under his helmet and no one would be any the wiser. But Karga had finally stopped complaining after Din had brought in his fifth bail jumper.

“I’m not here for you,” Din said.

“I figured as much. Bounty is for a Gamorrean, male, thirty nine years old,” the man said. He tossed a small object at Din, and Din caught it. It was the puck that Din had collected from Karga for the job. The man must have found it in the wreckage and unlocked its hologram function to read the warrant.

Din inspected the puck. It didn’t appear to have been tempered with. Satisfied that it wouldn’t blow up in his hands, he pocketed it. “You’re obviously familiar with the guild. You could go after him yourself.”

“I could,” the man conceded. “He’s doubled back, to Mos Eisley, I assume. Too afraid to stick around and see what happened to you.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“The job doesn’t pay enough. You can have him. I’ll even take you to Mos Eisley for a price,” the man said.

Din didn’t like this. He had a sneaking suspicion that he knew what the man wanted. People always thought they could persuade him to give up his weapons, his helmet, and/or his armor. They exercised little imagination in their demands, although their imagination knew no bounds when it came to what they thought he looked like under his helmet. “What do you want?”

“Nothing you can’t bear to part with. Information,” the man said, “and credits for half of the bounty offered for the Gamorrean.” 

“I don’t carry that kind of credits with me,” Din said shortly.

“Or you can give me your beskar helmet. It’ll sell for a pretty wupiupi,” the man said.

There it was. The helmet.

“No,” Din said, but he continued because he hadn’t forgotten that he would be slowly roasted to death by the twin suns if he didn’t find a way out of the Dune Sea, “My ship is in Mos Eisley. I’ll sell the parts to get the credits you want.”

“As long as you pay me,” the man said. He lowered his cycler rifle, and went back to looking through the wreckage of Din’s crashed swoop bike.

Din wordlessly did the same. He found his waterskins and his bag of provisions a dozen feet away from the bike seat. His tent and bedroll had burrowed halfway into the sand, which saved them from a fiery death. He kept looking for his rifle and blaster pistol until the man tossed him the two guns. His guns were too light. He didn’t have to check them to know his blaster gas cartridges were gone.

“That isn’t part of the deal,” Din growled.

“You’ll get your ammunition back when we reach Mos Eisley,” the man said, strapping charred bike parts to the bantha that he had hitched to a temporary post.

The bantha was twice as tall as a man and fifty times as massive. The man climbed into the saddle on the bantha’s back with the ease of a pilot climbing into his ship. The man didn’t offer to let Din ride, and Din didn’t ask. As they set off, the bantha moved slowly and languidly as befit an animal of its size. Din followed behind the bantha, stepping in its wide tracks, thankful for the shade that its towering bulk provided. He stuck as close to the bantha as possible without hugging its furry behind or stepping on its tail. If the bantha kicked him with its hind legs, he would live but he would bruise badly under the armor, and he doubted the man would let him into the saddle. 

The shadows alternated in length as the day wore on. Din walked alongside the bantha whenever its shadow was cast to its left or right. If the man had noticed Din chasing the shade, he didn’t say anything. The man rode and Din walked in silence, each accustomed to travelling with no company but their own.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of headcanons in these chapters, including but not limited to the diets of the various animals on Tatooine. If there are any inconsistencies with canon lore, it’s because I’m a filthy casual fan. :)
> 
> Also some womp rat hunting in this chapter.

It was almost nightfall when they made camp at the foot of a rocky outcrop, which sat in the desert like a beached watercraft. The rocky outcrop had breached the horizon just before the first sun had set, and they had made good time to reach it before the last rays of sunlight were gone. Although the rock face was sheer, its width provided them with some protection from the wind that had picked up in the late afternoon. 

The man hitched his bantha to a boulder, and set up a tent for himself. He didn’t spare a glance for Din.

There were too few landmarks in the Dune Sea for Din to gauge how far they had travelled. He only knew that the smoke from the wreckage of his swoop bike was no longer visible. His head was throbbing from the explosion that had knocked him out, and the ache had grown into a migraine that was pressing against the back of his eyes. He had not slept regularly when he had been chasing the Gamorrean across the desert. As a New Republic deserter, the Gamorrean had been surprisingly elusive.

Din didn’t bother to pitch his tent. He covered himself with his cloak, which wouldn’t do much to warm him if the temperature dropped further in the night. He didn’t realize how tired he was until he laid his head down on his bedroll and fell asleep immediately.

He woke to early sunlight and the noise of activity. The other man was putting out a dying campfire. They set off on their trek soon after the day’s second daybreak.

Trailing behind the bantha, Din had a quick meal of hardtack and jerky without taking off his helmet. His headache had subsided after a night of rest. His head didn’t feel like it was about to birth a rancor anymore.

The proximity light on the tracking fob was active. The Gamorrean must still be on Tatooine. Din could only hope that the Gamorrean hadn’t headed for another town. The Gamorrean had seemed to be enjoying his new life as a barkeeper in Mos Eisley up till the moment Din had walked into his cantina. Din tried his holotransmitter next, but there was no signal. Din hadn’t really expected it to work this far out in the Dune Sea. Connection was spotty at best even in the more populous spaceports in the Outer Rim.

When they stopped for a midday meal, Din forwent food to fix the fuel line on the flamethrower in his vambrace. It was easier to do it in the day than by firelight at night. His flamethrower was useless without the fuel that the man had confiscated from him, but Din had known first-hand that rigorous weapons maintenance was not just a matter of self-discipline. No matter how fast he could draw his gun, he was only one jammed blaster away from being taken out of a gunfight. The man ate his meal as he silently watched Din dissemble and clean his own blaster, and packed up before Din got around to cleaning his Amban rifle.

It was much later, after they had set up camp for the night, that the man exchanged words with Din for the first time that day and told him that his provisions wouldn’t last him for the whole journey.

“Out here, you eat what you kill,” the man said, as he led Din up to the crest of a dune.

“You hunt with arrows?” Din said, glancing at the quiver and crossbow that the man was carrying. The crossbow wasn’t an energy weapon like the bowcasters used by Wookiees. The bowstring was pulled taut over a latch, behind which a scope was mounted.

“Blaster bolts burn the meat,” the man said.

The high heat from blaster bolts singed everything they passed through. The sharp bitter tang tended to linger long after a meal. It was one of the reasons why Din preferred stocking his ship with long-lasting rations to hunting his own food. But burnt meat was still edible, and Din usually wouldn’t be in a position to be picky about his food if he were resorting to eating the local wildlife. 

“Womp rats?” Din said.

The stink of a rotting animal carcass was wafting up from the trough below them. It was too dark to see, but from the sound of it, a pack of womp rats were feasting on the carcass. A womp rat was not much bigger than two meters on average. With their ravenous appetite, a pack of them could make short work of a bloated bantha. Now and then there were snarls from the pack as they fought amongst themselves.

“Yes. A dozen of them at most.” The man readied his crossbow.

He shot into the trough. There was a meaty thud when his arrow hit the target. He reloaded and fired his arrows in quick succession. The chattering from the womp rats had quieted, not because the womp rats had a sense of self-preservation but because only a few of them were still alive. There were no pained squeals. Each of the man’s shot was a killing shot.

“Use this, but don’t shoot me in the back.” The man passed his crossbow to Din before climbing down the dune. He would want to retrieve his kills quickly. Womp rats had a tendency to cannibalize their own.

Din activated the thermal imaging in his helmet. The womp rats showed up as a red writhing mass congregating on the carcass. He fired the crossbow, and hit the carcass instead. The womp rats near the impact scattered. His next shot ended up in the sand. The crossbow was unwieldy. He had little experience with non-energy weapons. It was impossible for him to learn how to compensate for the downward arc within a few shots. Frustrated, he pulled out the throwing knives that he had brought with him.

His throwing knives were durasteel blades that he had ordered from the blacksmith on Nevarror and that he had used primarily for target practice. They were razor sharp but they had nothing on the full set of high-grade throwing vibroblades that Xi’an owned. Her vibroblades could cut through doors and locks. She was hired for her vibroblades as much as her skills in using them. 

Din still remembered the lessons she had taught him. He breathed and concentrated. He just had to get better at leading his targets.

 _“Aw, having performance issues, Mando?”_ the memory of Xi’an’s hissing laughter rang in his ear.

A womp rat screeched when Din’s knife missed it by inches. It took another two tries for Din to hit it.

In the end, he used eleven knives to kill the four remaining womp rats. The only reason he had gotten them all was because the creatures had been too greedy to leave the carcass behind.

Din attached his flashlight to the side of his helmet, and slid down the dune.

The smell of rot was thick and cloying down here in the trough. Din could now see that the half-eaten carcass had once been a dewback. The man was checking over it for valuable parts. The dead womp rats were stacked in a pile. Din’s throwing knives stuck out of the fur of some of them.

“You could use more practice,” the man said.

Din bristled at the criticism. He thrusted the crossbow at the man, who took it back. “This would’ve gone quicker if you’d returned my ammunition to me.”

“Blaster bolts burn the meat,” the man repeated stonily.

They roped the womp rats together, and dragged them back to camp, where the bantha had already asleep. Din skinned and gutted the womp rats, while the man started a campfire. The womp rats were skinny; they were more fur and bone than meat. The man roasted the meat together with strange vegetables that he had picked in the desert. Tiny droplets of melted fat ran down the meat and dripped into the fire. The smell of cooking meat made Din’s mouth water. Din had been eating dehydrated rations for months since the job in Hutt Space. 

“I have questions to ask you,” the man said, sitting down across from Din as they waited for the food to cook. “Information that I want.”

“We haven’t reached Mos Eisley yet,” Din said, recalling their deal.

“We’re on our way there. I’m within my rights to demand partial payment for my service,” the man said.

“That’s not what we agreed.”

“I have many questions. If you want to look for your quarry as soon as you reach Mos Eisely, I suggest we get this out of the way before then,” the man said.

The request seemed reasonable if the man put it like this. Din was indeed worried about not being able to find his quarry again. At times, Din wished the Corps had trained him in negotiating deals like they had in hand-to-hand combat. Paz had scoffed at the credits Din had brought back to the Covert for his first job with the Guild, and told him that Mandalorians were ‘worth more than this miserly sum’. Paz’s disagreement with him had quickly turned into fisticuffs, which had then earned Din a lecture from an elder but taught him nothing about the art of negotiating.

“I’ll tell you what you want to know, but you’ll only get your credits after we reach Mos Eisley as agreed,” Din said.

“As agreed,” the man said.

“What do you want to know?”

“Princess Leia Organa from Alderaan. Is she alive?” the man said.

“Alderaan is gone, vaporized by the Empire. If you’re looking for someone from that doomed planet, I suggest you give up the search. There’s little chance they’ve survived unless they were off-world,” Din said.

“What about Captain Han Solo? Corellian. Smuggler. Captain of the _Millennium Falcon_.” The man watched Din with sharp eyes that seemed to look through his armor. Din had nothing to hide from him. The man might as well be asking Din about the latest planetside arrival on the other side of the desert.

“I don’t know the man or the ship. If he’s a smuggler, he might’ve been arrested by the New Republic. They’ve been cracking down on smuggling in the Outer Rim recently,” Din said.

“You’ve never heard of him?”

“No,” Din said shortly. “What do you want with him?”

“He’s an old friend of mine,” the man said. His scarred lips curled up unpleasantly. “My name is Boba Fett. He left me for dead in the desert.”

Din sighed inwardly. He had received similar job offers before. All these stories of injustice and vengeance sounded the same to him after a while, but it was what gave him work. “I can’t accept bounties from sources outside the Guild. If you want to post a bounty on him, you’ll have to check with the Guild. I think there is a Guild hub in Mos Eisley.”

“It’s defunct now.” Fett wasn’t smiling anymore. He was watching Din with that piercing look in his eyes again, and Din had no idea what he was watching for. “How long have you been working for the Guild?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I want to know how good your information is.”

Din relented. “Not long. A year or so. I used to work as a gun-for-hire. Merc work pays well if you can find it.” 

“But you can’t find work as a mercenary anymore.”

“Something like that.” Din didn’t feel inclined to elaborate further.

The truth was Ranzar Malk had made sure that every merc and syndicate in the Outer Rim knew what Din had done on that last job. There weren’t many other career paths that a man with no crew and with his skillset could pursue. Din had been lucky to get an in with Karga. Karga had been looking for Mandalorian muscles to pad the ranks of his new Guild hub on Nevarro, no questions asked. While Guild work came with more terms and conditions than what Din had been used to, it was a relief to have the Code to rely on in his new line of work. It made things less complicated.

“I guess there is no point in asking if you’ve heard of a Trandoshan bounty hunter that goes by the name of Bossk,” Fett said.

“I work alone,” Din said. He didn’t bother to get acquainted with any of his fellow bounty hunters. But he felt unsettled when Fett lapsed into silence and gazed into the fire. Din hadn’t given Fett any information he wanted, despite what Din had agreed. Din wouldn’t be able to fulfill his promise to Fett, and uphold the Creed. “Ask me something else. I’ll tell you what I know.”

“I have more questions,” Fett assured him, and stood up to remove the roasted meat and vegetables from the fire. “But first we eat.”


	3. Chapter 3

Din wasn’t sure what had woken him.

He rolled onto his side, wide awake, but he didn’t hear any sound other than the wind outside his tent. He wasn’t prone to flights of fantasy, even in the absolute stillness of the vacuum of space when his ship drifted without fuel. Sometimes the body noticed danger before the mind did, like the prickle on the back of his neck he would get when he attracted unwanted attention. Having slept in his armor and gear, Din slipped on his helmet, and crept out of his tent.

The sky hadn’t lightened yet. There were embers glowing in the pile of firewood where the campfire had burnt. The bantha was sleeping at the same spot where Fett had left it, an unmovable bulk in the strong wind sweeping across the desert, unbothered by the sand collecting in its long fur.

Fett’s tent was empty.

Din increased the light sensitivity of his visor until his helmet HUD picked up tracks in the ground. There was only one set of footprints leading away from the tent. The tracks were shallow, having been partially filled in by sand. Din followed the tracks. The tracks led him towards the trough where he had hunted womp rats the night before. As he got closer to the trough, the tracks converged with tracks that belonged to much larger animals. Banthas.

Din ducked behind a rock when he saw firelight ahead. Guttural voices were conversing in a strange language. 

A native was holding a lit torch. In the firelight, six other natives were sawing the dewback carcass into large pieces. Their heads and limbs were wrapped in strips of cloth. Their masks and goggles shielded their features from the harsh elements. They wore bandoliers and ammo belts over their beige robes, which were dusty with sand. Din frowned as he watched them work. He was under the impression that their eating habits were similar to other humanoids. Unless they could eat spoiled meat, they would have little use for the carcass.

Then there was the unmistakable sound of claws raking through sand. Soft footsteps were coming towards Din. 

It was a massif, around a meter in height and length. A vicious animal that hunted in packs. Adapted to the desert climate, its body was covered in scaly hide. Its razor sharp teeth and claws could tear into the unprotected belly of a bigger animal within seconds. Its spinal quills, which covered the entirety of its back, were standing on ends, as it sniffed at the rock that Din was hiding behind.

Din drew his blaster. His blaster, though it was unloaded, worked well for bludgeoning unsuspecting targets.

“You’d want to put your blaster away before you make a fool of yourself, friend,” Fett said, striding out of the trough towards Din, seeming to have materialized out of the inky darkness beyond the native’s torch. He was accompanied by another native.

The massif swerved its head in Fett’s direction. It stared at Fett but made no movement towards him. Fett’s companion joined the group that was cutting up the dewback carcass. The native with the torch spoke to Fett in the guttural language. Fett answered and gestured with his hands. Although Fett carried their weapons, Din hadn’t put it past Fett to have acquired the weapons with force. The distinction between good men and bad men didn’t matter much in the desert; there were just living men and dead ones. But the natives didn’t react negatively when they saw Din walk out from behind the rock. One of them called out a command, and the massiff trotted back to them.

“What are you doing out here?” Fett said.

Din holstered his blaster. “I should be asking you that. I was looking for you.” 

“I’d asked the Tuskens for directions,” Fett said, “after I dissuaded them from raiding our camp.”

Din’s hand twitched towards his blaster again. “They’re a proud people. What is stopping them?”

“Their word of honor,” Fett said.

Honor was a loaded word. It meant much to Din, and little to others, as he had learnt from past encounters that he had barely survived. But when he was traversing wild lands and untamed space where laws had yet to be laid down, the belief that there was value in one’s words was the only reassurance he could cling to.

Mistaking Din’s contemplative silence for doubt, Fett said, “Don’t look so skeptical, friend. Mandalorians aren’t the only ones who are honorable.”

Din flexed his hand, and forced himself to relax. “No, of course not.”

The Tuskens had finished cutting up the carcass. Together, they carried the parts to their banthas that were waiting at the other end of the trough. The Tusken with the torch was the last to leave. He put out the fire in the sand. Then he growled lowly at Fett, which made Din reach for his vibroblade, and Fett answered the Tusken in kind. That must have been the equivalent of a goodbye in their language, because the Tusken mounted a bantha, and, with a loud cry, rode out of the trough with the other Tuskens in single file. A pack of massiffs ran ahead of them, leading the way.

“They won’t retread their path until they seize a prize to bring back to their tribe. That’s the last we’ll see of this raiding party,” Fett said.

Din understood that to mean they would cross paths with other raiding parties in the near future. Din hadn’t been intercepted by Tuskens when he had crossed the desert on the swoop bike. The swoop bike had been fast, and the Gamorrean had known the desert well enough to keep close to routes used by settlers. Din hadn’t seen any settlements since he had been making his journey back with Fett. They must be travelling in Tusken territory.

“I’m heading back.” Fett was walking away. “We have four hours before dawn. You’re welcome to stand guard if you’re worried about the Tuskens.”

The Tusken raiding party had travelled far into the distance. Din had to activate his helmet’s thermal imaging and enhance his visor’s magnifier with his spyglass. The Tusken that brought up the rear was leaving parts of the dewback in the sand. Maybe it was to throw predators off their scent, or to feed scavengers that lived off the land. Din had heard that the Tuskens believed that spiritual connections existed between the land, the living, and the dead. Their refusal to bury their own dead in particular had been derided by settlers.

In the following nights at mealtimes, Fett grilled Din on trade routes and hyperspace lanes. Fett was well-travelled. He had been to planets so far off the course of established routes that no spaceports were built. Din had only heard of the more notorious black market hubs that he mentioned. However, it was clear that he hadn’t been off-world recently. Much had changed since the destruction of the second Death Star, a holovid of which had been broadcasted to every planet in the galaxy. When his ship had received the transmission, Din had been stopping over for refuel on a planet that had perpetual daylight. That day, he had drunk until he had been sick on his ship and in his intoxication he could hear the Songs echoing throughout the sewers of Nevarro.

Despite the rumored death of Emperor, the Empire had refused to bend to the New Republic. The continued skirmishes between the New Republic and Imperial remnants had made some sectors unsafe to travel. In cantinas, it was common to overhear traders exchanging news about civilian ships that had been caught in the crossfire. One of the most widely publicized casualties was a fleet of merchantmen that had been carrying cargo from the Core Worlds. More than a thousand souls had gone down with the ships. It was the subject of the most recent propaganda materials that were displayed in all major New Republic affiliated ports. Din couldn’t walk down a street without coming face-to-face with a hologram of lifeless bodies drifting out of breached ship hulls. He had been glad to leave once he had cornered his quarry in a brothel. Mercenaries were more in demand than ever, especially in sectors where the New Republic’s patrols were few and pirates ran rampant. Entire planets had been taken over by warlords who had assumed control after Imperials had fled their bases.

The New Republic might have intended to implement changes like they had promised, but they were now too busy fighting the galaxy to finish the job.

“How about Guild jobs? Imperial?” Fett said, turning a spit on which a bird was roasting.

“No. Most jobs are commissioned by the New Republic. The rest by the Hutts and a few people who can afford the Guild’s rates,” Din said.

“The Guild doesn’t turn away clients,” Fett mused, “unless they’re broke, then they’re no use to anyone.”

Din wondered again what dealings Fett had with the Guild. The familiarity with which Fett spoke of the Guild belonged to either a seasoned hunter or a valuable bounty. He wasn’t like the bored barkeepers that offered Din a drink on the house in exchange for updates on the biggest bounties in the Guild, which grew with each passing month that they stayed uncollected. They only heard about the credits that those jobs brought in, not the mundane jobs that made up the bulk of a bounty hunter’s work. Din tracked down smalltime criminals, and spent most of his return trips listening to them cuss up a storm in the unused quarters where he had locked them away. If he was lucky, he would get a spicedealer who knew how to shoot back.

They crossed paths with Tusken raiding parties every other day. Fett negotiated passage with the Tuskens, and asked them about coordinates and possible dangers that lurked ahead. Fett translated the relevant information for Din when he asked. The coordinates that the Tuskens provided made little sense to Din, since they used a geographic coordinate system that didn’t conform to the galactic standard. However, the warnings of sandstorms and quicksand needed no explanation.

Fett was visibly pleased when he spotted a sandcrawler rumbling across a salt flat one afternoon. Fett traded to a Jawa the bike parts that he had scavenged from Din’s wreck, while Din swung his rifle at the Jawas who couldn’t keep their hands to themselves and off his armor. The Jawas ignored his warning and scratched his armor with their screwdrivers, shaking their heads in disapproval when they heard the dull screech of steel on durasteel. Fortunately for the Jawas, Fett finished the transaction before Din tried to get his warning across by killing one of them.

Fett tried to pass Din half of the food and water that he had traded for. When Din didn’t move to take them, Fett said with a touch of impatience, “Take them. They’re yours.”

“In exchange for what?” Din said.

“You’ve already paid. They’re your cut for your bike,” Fett said, and Din accepted the supplies grudgingly.

The days grew long when the air was hazy with heat.

Dunes on the horizon looked like they had reflections that belonged on the surface of a large lake. Din saw hill ranges that extended for miles, before he realized those were mirages too. Surrounded by sceneries that were partly the products of tricks of the light and walking on a sandy ground that yielded under his feet with every step, he would think he was wandering in a spice dream, if it were not for the ache that persisted in his legs from his extended trek.

His armor’s thermal regulator kept him cool by pumping out the heat trapped under his flight suit, but not even his armor could keep sand out, which had a way of getting into every crack of his armor and every crease of his clothes. The sand wouldn’t be so irritating if he didn’t have to sleep in his gear every night. As it was, the sand already scrubbed his skin raw during the day. Wary of being caught off guard inside his tent, he only dared to strip down to his waist and wipe himself with a piece of dry cloth that he had torn from his cloak.

Din grimaced at the small heap of sand that poured out of his boots. The sooner he got out of the Dune Sea, the better.


	4. Chapter 4

“Brooding so early in the morning, friend?” Fett said, strapping his packed tent to the back of his bantha.

Embarrassed, Din looked away from the dunes that he had been surveying. He had been noting down the topographic readout that was showing on his helmet’s HUD. It would be useful to familiarize himself with the surrounding terrain if he had to travel the Dune Sea again. Of course, to Fett, Din looked like he was staring blankly into the distance.

“I didn’t thank you, for the food and water,” Din said haltingly. “You acted above and beyond the scope of our agreement.”

The extra rations from the Jawas had come in useful. Din had already finished the provisions that he had brought with him into the Dune Sea. Fett insisted that they hunted and foraged whenever possible, which helped to conserve their supplies.

“No thanks needed. Like I said, they rightfully belong to you,” Fett said. He mounted his bantha. “Our Tusken friends have left. We should get going too.”

They had been encountering small groups of Tusken every other day. Thanks to Fett’s fluency in the Tuskens’ strange language, Fett was successful in requesting passage. The Tuskens were hospitable hosts and eager storytellers that often invited Din and Fett to share the warmth of their campfire. Din was starting to pick up their language, which consisted of a curious mix of hand gestures and vocal noises. They used signs to communicate the content of the message while sounds to denote the speaker’s inflection and emotion.

Last night, a Tusken had warned them about a demon that prowled the sands. While the demon could be another name the Tuskens had for sandstorms (like the twin suns that the Tuskens referred to as ‘the Brothers’), the Tusken had also warned them of a well nearby that had been poisoned by the blood of the demon’s victims, killing anyone that drank from it.

“What is the sand demon?” Din asked Fett, keeping pace with Fett’s bantha.

“An antagonist that shows up frequently in Tusken tales,” Fett said. “The Tuskens blame the demon for any unexplainable misfortunes that occur out here in the desert, ranging from the deaths of their livestock to the disappearances of entire tribes.”

“It’s a myth,” Din concluded.

“Maybe,” Fett said ponderously. “But there are often some truths to their tales. You’d be surprised.”

They didn’t come into contact with any Tuskens that day. A lone Tusken herding a large group of banthas watched them from far away. A couple of Tuskens rode past on long-legged etobis that loped off into the distance; their mounts weren’t carrying any tents or supplies.

“Scouts,” Din said, lowering his spyglass. “They’ve seen us.”

“Yes, and they’re returning to their tribe to report the sighting,” Fett said.

“Shouldn’t you stop them?” Din said.

“Not a good idea. It would be difficult for us to continue through the desert if you hurt them,” Fett said. “Let them go. We’ll see them again.”

It was the next day when Din spotted a long line of dark dots moving towards them on a ridge. There were a dozen of Tuskens riding on banthas, in greater number than the other raiding parties that they had encountered so far. Din called up to Fett, “We have company. Tuskens.”

Atop his bantha, Fett raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes. “I see them.”

“It’s not a raiding party,” Din said.

“No, there are no large settlements nearby that would require them to send out this number of raiders. They’re here for us,” Fett said.

As the Tuskens approached them in single file, Fett signed the greeting that Din had come to understand, <Respect I pay to the suns in the sky, the sand on the wind, and the water under the land. Forever belong they to your kin.>

A Tusken rode forwards and signed rapidly at Fett. Din spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. The rest of the Tuskens were surrounding them on all sides.

“They say we have to accompany them to their camp. Their elder wants to see us,” Fett translated.

“Do we have a choice?” Din said.

“Not without a fight,” Fett said.

The Tuskens was fully armed with cycler rifles. With that said, cycler rifles are slugthrowers that had to be reloaded manually after each shot. Din could seek cover from gunfire under the Tuskens’ bantha mounts, and pick off the Tuskens one by one. However, he couldn’t guarantee that Fett would survive in the firefight, and he was still heavily invested in Fett’s survival.

“Fine. We go with them,” Din said. He signed to the Tusken that had spoken to Fett, <Follow you, we.>

<Come with. Far walk. Single file,> the Tusken replied.

It took them a day’s walk to reach a large Tusken camp that was tucked away behind a valley. Tents loomed out of the darkness of night in neat rows. Tusken women lit lanterns and let their children play outside the tents. The women wore long mantles that draped over their heads and torsos. Unlike the simple masks that the men wore over the lower halves of their faces, the women’s masks covered the entirety of their faces and were adorned with thin metal scraps that hung down to their chests. 

The Tuskens ordered Din and Fett to stop outside the camp, where dozens of banthas were hitched to posts. A Tusken raiding party had arrived before them, and the Tuskens were carrying large metal cylinders off the backs of their banthas. Full moisture tanks, one of the most valuable commodities in the desert.

“Look like a couple of moisture farmers are gonna go dry this season,” Fett said.

“The Tuskens have always been at odds with the settlers,” Din said. “I’m not here to judge their ways.”

Fett glanced over at him. “Not many travelers share your apathy.”

Din had stopped over at a moisture farm when he had ridden past Anchorhead outside of Mos Eisley. The miserable moisture farmers had offered to pay him to kill the Tuskens that had been terrorizing them, because they hadn’t dared venture far from their homestead without weapons. Din had refused their offer once it had become apparent that they couldn’t afford the Guild’s rates.

“I’m not paid to interfere in local affairs,” Din said.

“That’s good. You may yet survive the Dune Sea,” Fett said, and it might be the first compliment that Din had heard from him.

“Just practical,” Din said.

A pack of massiffs were following the Tuskens and their long tongues were lolling out of their mouths. The Tuskens were met with loud cheering honks from their tribesmen once they stepped inside the camp. Tusken men and women reached out to touch the water tanks with their covered hands when they passed.

A Tusken walked up to Boba with a torch. <See elder you.>

Fett nodded at the Tusken, and then said to Din, “You stay and keep an eye on our personal effects.”

“No,” Din said. He grabbed Fett by the arm without thinking. “We go together.”

Fett looked down at Din’s hand on his arm. It was only then that Din flushed at how mistrustful he must’ve sounded and pulled away. Fett said with amusement, “I’ll keep up my end of the deal to take you to Mos Eisley. Don’t you worry. I intend to collect my payment.”

“We shouldn’t split up. We don’t know what they want,” Din said.

“We wouldn’t be going anywhere if they took our transport and provisions,” Fett said. The Tusken was grunting and vocalizing his impatience. They didn’t have much time for further discussion. Fett repeated himself before leaving with the Tusken, “Stay here.”

Din was left entirely alone outside the camp. It would be easy for a dishonorable man to slip away unnoticed. However, even if there were anywhere to go but the deadly desert beyond the valley, Din wouldn’t stoop so slow as to steal Fette’s mount and leave Fett behind. Din stood guard, while the bantha was chewing on dried straws that a Tusken had offered to it.

A low growl sounded out of the darkness behind the bantha.

Din tensed and raised his Amban rifle. He lowered it again when he heard giggling. The bantha, however, had heard the growl too. It was grunting and tossing its large head from side to side.

“Easy.” Din patted the banthas’ matted fur.

The bantha calmed down once Din shoved the remaining straws under its nose. Once he was certain that the bantha wouldn’t run off in agitation, he crept towards the backend of the bantha where he had heard the growl.

A massiff pup was pawing at the bantha’s tail. Unlike the adults, the top of the pup’s head only reached Din’s knees. The massiff pup stopped when it noticed Din, and stared up at him out of the two sides of its head. It growled again, now with a rumbling noise that seemed to vibrate in its throat and abdomen. Its spinal quills are rising on its back.

Din tried to placate the massiff like he had seen the Tuskens did, holding his hands out, but suddenly a Tusken child shoved him away. The Tusken child wore a cowl that covered his entire head and face, except for a small slit in the clothing where he could see out of. <Touch no!>

<Okay.> Din put up his hands.

The child made a low growling noise at the massif pup. The pup lowered its head, and its quills flattened against its spine.

<Like this.> The child grasped Din’s right arm and made him hold his palm out. The massiff pup sniffed his hand. Din reached out slowly. He patted the massiff’s sides. Its scaly skin was dry to the touch. The massiff pup wagged its stub of a tail. Its quills were soft; they would harden with age and would be sharp enough to spear through a human’s hand.

The child sat back on his heels, and gazed up at Din. <From tribe what?>

Din didn’t know the Tusken word for Mandalorian or if the word even existed in their language, so he answered with the words that the Tuskens used for offworlders, <From the stars.>

The child gestured at Din’s helmet. <But no face?>

<No face, like you,> Din signed back.

The child seemed to be delighted with his answer. <– from the stars too. – no face before teeth pit.>

<Teeth pit?> Din asked with a slight smile. If he had learnt anything from travelling across the galaxy, it was that anything that had teeth as its defining characteristic was bad news.

<Teeth pit! –!> the child replied. His hands flew in wild gestures. The child repeated again the two words that Din hadn’t understood, and then Din suddenly realized the child wasn’t pronouncing Tusken words. It was Galactic Basic. <Teeth pit! Boba Fett! Teeth pit dead!>

“Boba Fett,” Din repeated slowly. The child nodded energetically. Din kept his hands steady as he signed, <Know name, how?>

<Tribe friend. Old friend. Today visit again.>

Fett knew these Tuskens, and he had never said a word to Din on the way here. Fett’s connection to them had always been apparent: the Tusken weapons that Fett carried, the fluency he had in their language, the passage that he had easily negotiated from the Tuskens.

Fett was conspiring against him. It would explain why Fett had insisted that Din stayed behind while Fett had gone ahead to confer with the Tuskens that had brought them here. Din wouldn’t put it past Fett to have brought Din into the territory of this tribe so he could hand Din over. Dank ferrik. Were they even anywhere near Mos Eisley?

<Sick? Thirsty?> the child asked, worrying over Din’s sudden lack of response.

<No,> Din replied. The child wasn’t to be blamed for the predicament that Din had found himself in. Din said first in Galactic Basic, “Mos Eisley,” and then signed, <Close?>

The child signed, <Understand no. Close what?>

It was a wild shot in the dark. Of course the child didn’t know Mos Eisley by its Galactic Basic name. The Tuskens had names for the settlements in their own language.

Din tried to describe Mos Eisley, <Ships from the stars. Farms. Domes. Homes.> He was only exciting the child, who thought they were playing a guessing game. Before Din got any closer to the answer he was looking for, they were interrupted by a Tusken who stepped outside the camp and saw Din with the child. The Tusken roared at the child, <Back!>

Din stepped in. <Peace. Child only.>

But the child had already run back into the camp with the massiff pup.

The Tusken turned to address Din, <See elder you.>

The Tusken wanted Din to head into the camp with him. Din glanced back at Fett’s bantha. Fett was never in fear of the Tuskens taking the bantha, was he? It had been a ploy to keep Din out here all along. Din answered, <Okay.>

On his guard, following the Tusken into the camp, Din attached his vibroblade to the inside of his vambrace under the cover of darkness.

The Tusken took Din to the middle of the camp, where a bonfire burnt. Tusken men stood in a loose ring around the fire. Within the ring, next to the fire, an old Tusken man was leaning heavily on a walking cane made out of blackened bark. Fett was standing by the elder with his arms crossed; his face was unreadable in the flickering firelight.

<Respect to you, passing stranger,> the elder greeted Din.

<Respect to you,> Din replied.

<Spoken your friend me. Agreed your friend,> the elder gestured at Fett. The elder said to Din, <Same question to you, your turn. Seek passage you. Grant passage I, one condition.>

<Your condition, what?> Din asked.

The elder then told a tale of disappearances of banthas and raiders in the night. The disappearances hadn’t been the acts of the demon that prowled the sand, like some had speculated. A herder had found gigantic tracks of an invasive species not known to the Tuskens. The tracks had led to a cave, which the Tuskens couldn’t enter without violating an old agreement passed down by their ancestors from centuries past.

It was a long tale speckled with Tusken words that Din didn’t understand, but Din got the gist of it. The condition was simple, and it was a fair price for passage across Tusken land.

<Accepted. Dead beast for safe passage,> Din signed.

<Accepted,> the elder repeated after him.

The surrounding Tuskens burst into grunts of cheers. The Tuskens were a simple people. They had brought Din here for one reason only, and they had gotten what they wanted.

Fett nodded at Din with a slight dip of his head.

But Din didn’t know what role Fett played in all this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woot, season 2 has been a wild ride! [SPOILER FOR SEASON 2 FINALE] ~~I was planning to write about Jabba’s lairs in the next chapter, and they beat me to it in the very last minute of the season, dangit lol.~~ [END SPOILER]
> 
> I’ll keep going with what I’ve already planned for this fic from the start though, so there may be/have been divergences from canon details introduced after season 2 episode 1. :)


End file.
